OUR PICKSU.S. Legal Immigration Shortage | Midterms & Extremist Violence | How China Captured Hollywood, and more

Fake Passports Allow IS Members to Enter Europe and U.S.  (Vera Mironova and Bethan McKernan, Guardian)
Seller whose passports have been used by those who illegally crossed Syrian border says: ‘it is not my job to see who is bad’.

What the January 6^th Papers Reveal  (Amy Davidson Sorkin, New Yorker)
The Supreme Court ruled to give the House Select Committee access to a trove of documents detailing election-negating strategies that Donald Trump and his advisers entertained—including a military seizure of voting machines—but he continues to peddle a counter-narrative in which he is the victim.

Modernizing Financial Management in the DHS: A Conversation with Stacy Marcott  (Federal News Network)

DHS Warns of Copycat Attacks after Hostage Standoff in Texas Synagogue  (Nicole Sganga and Olivia Gazis, CBS News)
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a terror threat bulletin Monday warning that supporters of foreign terrorist organizations have encouraged copycat attacks following last month’s hostage standoff crisis at Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.

U.S. Warns Midterms Could Spark Calls for Extremist Violence  (Ben Foax, AP / Philadelphia Inquirer)
The Department of Homeland Security warns that unsubstantiated claims of fraud that have haunted the U.S. since the 2020 election could return for the upcoming midterms

The U.S. Legal Immigration Shortage  (Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal)
Fewer H-2B visas coincided with fewer jobs for Americans.
Businesses are getting whipsawed by the Biden Administration regulatory juggernaut, but here’s a rule-making they can cheer: The Department of Homeland Security is exercising its discretionary authority to issue 20,000 more H-2B visas for seasonal workers in the coming months.

Erik Prince Helped Raise Money for Conservative Spy Venture  (Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman, New York Times)
New details reveal the ambitions of an operation intended to infiltrate opponents of Donald Trump, including moderate Republicans as well as progressives and Democrats.

Climate Models Are Behaving Strangely, Bedeviling Scientists and Complicating Policy  (Robert Lee Hotz, Wall Street Journal)
Supercomputer simulations are running up against the complex physics of programming thousands of weather variables such as the extensive impact of clouds.

How China Captured Hollywood  (Erich Schwartzel, The Atlantic)
Over this next century, China wants to use the movies to rebrand itself, and it has learned how to do so from the best.

The Day I Was Tapped Up by Chinese Intelligence  (Charles Parton, The Spectator)
Nigel Inkster, a former director of MI6, has described China as an ‘intelligence state’. This was true even before the Chinese Communist party (CCP) passed laws that all individuals and organizations must help the security forces when asked. Chinese officials, party members and citizens have long been active across a broad front in advancing the interests of the CCP, seeking out political, military, scientific, technological and commercial information. Britain has to be wary of more than just the Ministry of State Security (MSS) — China’s secret police agency — or the military intelligence department. The revelation last month that the Labor MP and former shadow minister Barry Gardiner had accepted £420,000 from Christine Lee, a CCP ‘agent of influence’, was not an isolated occurrence.
We should not make the mistake, as one newspaper did last month, of thinking that ‘China today is not really interested in old-fashioned spying’. Its intelligence services are highly active and use many different methods for recruitment.